Left behind: intergenerational transmission of human capital in the midst of HIV/AIDS

This paper provides evidence on how adverse health conditions affect the transfer of human capital from one generation to the next. We explore the differential exposure to HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa as a substantial health shock to both household and community environment. We utilize the recent rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys for 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. First, we find that an additional year of maternal education leads to a 0.37-year increase in children’s years of schooling in the developing economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Second, our results show that mother’s HIV status has substantial detrimental effects on inheritability of human capital. We find that the association between infected mothers’ and their children’s human capital is 30 % less than the general population. Finally, focusing only on noninfected mothers and their children, we show that HIV prevalence in the community also impairs the intergenerational human capital transfers even if mother is HIV negative. The findings of this paper are particularly distressing for these already poor, HIV-torn countries as in the future they will have even lower overall level of human capital due to the epidemic.     

子女教育影响老年父母健康的机制及其异质性

基于2018年中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS)数据,运用Logit计量方法考察子女教育对老年父母健康的影响。结果发现子女教育提高1年,老年父母健康状况改善的可能性显著提高4.28%,异质性检验发现这种影响不存在城乡和性别差异。基于人力资本代际传递理论和社会资本理论,将子女教育影响老年父母健康的渠道归纳为资源转移、健康行为和社会性支持,结果发现:子女教育主要通过向父母转移资源和帮助老年父母优化健康行为习惯来改善父母健康,未能通过社会支持渠道产生健康促进效应。其中通过资源转移渠道和以适度饮酒、运动及休闲为代表的健康行为渠道分别解释了子女教育对老年父母健康促进效应的27.78%和9.78%,提高资源转移能力是子女教育影响老年父母健康的主要渠道。在我国老龄化背景下,需要重视子女教育对父母健康的促进作用。同时,采取积极措施拓展社会支持渠道,降低父母对子女的资源依赖,并加强健康教育,优化健康行为。     

Free education, fertility and human capital accumulation

This article analyzes the effect of free public education on fertility, private educational investments, and human capital accumulation at different stages of economic development. The model shows that, when fertility is endogenous, parental human capital levels are crucial for determining the effect of free education. At early stages of development when parental human capital is low, free access to basic education may provide the only chance to leave poverty. In contrast, at advanced stages of development when parental human capital is high, the availability of free education crowds out private educational investments, stimulates fertility, and may impede growth.     

Intergenerational income immobility in Finland: contrasting roles for parental earnings and family income

An intergenerational model is developed, nesting heritable earning abilities and credit constraints limiting human capital investments in children. Estimates on a large, Finnish data panel indicate very low transmission from parental earnings, suggesting that the parameter of inherited earning ability is tiny. Family income, particularly during the phase of educating children, is shown to be much more important in shaping children’s lifetime earnings. This influence of parental incomes on children’s earnings rises as the children age because the returns to education rise. Despite Finland’s well-developed welfare state, persistence in economic status across generations is much higher than previously thought.     

Children of Migrants: The Cumulative Impact of Parental Migration on Children’s Education and Health Outcomes in China

Since the end of 1990s, approximately 160 million Chinese rural workers migrated to cities for work. Because of restrictions on migrant access to local health and education systems, many rural children are left behind in home villages to grow up without parental care. This article examines how exposure to cumulative parental migration affects children’s health and education outcomes. Using the Rural-Urban Migration Survey in China (RUMiC) data, we measure the share of children’s lifetime during which parents were away from home. We instrument this measure of parental absence with weather changes in their home villages when parents were aged 16–25, when they were most likely to initiate migration. Results show a sizable adverse effect of exposure to parental migration on the health and education outcomes of children: in particular, boys. We also find that the use of the contemporaneous measure for parental migration in previous studies is likely to underestimate the effect of exposure to parental migration on children’s outcomes.     

The Effect of Cultural Capital on High School Dropout: An Investigation in the Italian Provinces

This article studies at a detailed geographical level the relation between cultural capital and high school dropout. Bronfenbrenner’s systemic theory and Heckman’s perspective on cognitive/non-cognitive skills are considered as theoretical framework. We analyzed data from 103 Italian provinces employing Covariance Structure Analysis and spatial indices of autocorrelation. We found a consistent protective effect of cultural capital on dropout, independently of economic performance, in Central and Southern provinces, but not in Northern provinces. Spatial analyses showed very heterogeneous patterns of autocorrelation for dropout (especially across Southern provinces) even between neighboring areas, in spite of a more compact clustering when considering cultural and economic indicators. These results indicate that living in an environment with animated cultural life might enhance students’ non-cognitive skills, thus fostering their involvement in formative activities and the development of their human capital.     

新生代农民工市民化意愿影响因素的实证研究--基于人力资本、社会资本和心理资本的考察

本文基于全国198个城市的样本数据,运用二元logistic回归模型,从人力资本、社会资本、心理资本三个维度对新生代农民工市民化意愿影响因素进行了实证分析。结果发现,人力资本中是否参加过培训、培训次数、拥有的技能数以及技术等级四个变量对新生代农民工市民化意愿有显著的影响。而学历水平没能通过显著性检验。社会资本中的外地同学亲戚数和参加社会活动的数量对新生代农民工市民化意愿有显著影响,而当地同学亲戚数没有通过显著性检验。心理资本中城市归属感、本地人态度、对城市同龄人看法三个变量对新生代农民工市民化意愿有显著影响,而对未来变化的预期及生活满意度没有通过显著性检验。因此,在新型城镇化进程中,对新生代农民工人力资本的培育要切合其市民化发展的需要,增加农民工与市民之间的互动,加强对农民工的心理引导,促进农民工实现市民化的心理转变。     

Multidimensional Targeting: Identifying Beneficiaries of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs

Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) have two main objectives: reducing poverty and increasing the human capital of children. To reach these objectives, transfers are given to poor households conditioned on investments in their children’s education, health, and nutrition. Targeting mechanisms used by CCTs have been generally successful in identifying the income poor but have not fared as well in identifying households that under-invest in human capital. These mechanisms do not consider the multidimensional aspect of poverty, even when composite measures are used, as they do not capture each dimension-specific deprivation. This paper proposes a multidimensional targeting approach to identifying beneficiaries that explicitly takes into consideration the multiple objectives of CCTs and the multiple deprivations of the poor household. Results indicate that the proposed multidimensional targeting methodology significantly improves the selection of households with children who are most deprived in the dimensions often relevant to CCTs. In the case of Mexico’s Oportunidades, ex-ante evaluation results indicate that the multidimensional identification of beneficiaries increases the impact of transfers on school attendance compared to alternative targeting models.     

Overeducation,Skills and Wage Penalty: Evidence for Spain Using PIAAC Data

Despite well documented high levels of socioeconomic inequalities, health gradients by socioeconomic status (SES) in contemporary China have been reported to be limited. Using data from the 2010–2012 China Family Panel Studies, we reexamine associations between three sets of SES—human capital, material conditions, and political capital—and self-rated health among Chinese adults 18–70 years old, capitalizing on anchoring vignette data to adjust for reporting heterogeneity. We find strong evidence of substantial variations in reporting behaviors by education, cognition, and family wealth but not by family income or political capital. Failing to correct for reporting heterogeneity can bias the estimates of SES gradients in self-rated health as much as nearly 40 %. After vignette adjustment, we find significantly positive associations of education, family income, wealth, and political capital with self-rated health. Individuals’ cognitive capacity, however, does not predict self-rated health.     

资本类型与新生代农村劳动力非农就业--来自江苏的证据

利用江苏地区农户调研资料，归纳总结新生代农村劳动力的非农就业行为及主要特征，并利用结构方程模型进一步剖析资本类型对非农就业行为的影响机制和作用路径。研究结果表明，以职业规划能力和受教育程度为主的个体资本正向影响新生代农村劳动力非农就业行为，但作用程度低于其它资本。其它资本中以社会资源衡量的社会资本对非农就业行为影响尤其显著。资本类型对非农就业区域的影响远高于非农就业行业。基于上述研究结论，文章最后提出提升群体受教育水平和职业规划能力、构建多维度非农就业权益保障机制与公共就业服务体系、优化产业区域布局与发挥城市集聚效应的政策建议。     

不同类型人力资本对经济增长的影响分析

人力资本包括量与质两方面 ,后者即凝聚在劳动者身上的知识、技能及其所表现出来的能力。本文从人力资本“质”的角度出发 ,将人力资本分为一般型、技能型、创新型三种人力资本类型。实证分析表明 ,一般型、技能型人力资本对经济增长的贡献有减弱的趋势 ,而创新型人力资本的贡献不断增大。据此 ,我们认为 ,政府在财政紧约束条件下应坚持人力资本投资市场化与公共教育投资重点化的政策取向     

Great Expectations: The Unintended Consequences of Educational Choices

Human capital is invariably found to be an important explanatory variable of various proxies for well being (WB), i.e. income, happiness, job and life satisfaction, and health status. Nevertheless, to date few systematic efforts have been made to explain its various interconnected functions. The U-shaped age-SWB relation found in many empirical studies suggests that investigating the pattern of different measures of WB over people’s life cycles may reveal important information and provide useful insights into the principal mechanisms that connect human capital and WB. In this paper, I explore data drawn from the Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) conducted by the Bank of Italy, which is a rich source of information on people’s socioeconomic and educational backgrounds, educational and skill mismatches in the workplace, and various measures of WB such as income, happiness, job satisfaction, and health status. I adopt a novel approach based on the idea that one should look at the overall contribution of education to well being within people’s life-cycles. The tentative explanations of my empirical findings are: (a) more educated people and people with vocational educations experience wide mismatches in their aspirations and expectations early in their adult lives; (b) these mismatches are largely confined to the labour market; and (c) the curvature of the U-shaped age-happiness relationship depends on the level and type of education. The suggested interpretation of these results is that education affects both people’s expectations and the way they react to unfulfilled aspirations.     

Child mortality and fertility: public vs private education

How does the effect of child mortality reductions on fertility and education vary across educational systems? To answer this question, we develop an overlapping-generations model where altruistic parents care about both the number and human capital of their surviving children. We find that, under a private education system, if income is low initially, the economy converges to a Malthusian stagnation steady state. For a high level of initial income, the economy reaches a growth path in which children’s education rises and fertility decreases with income. In the growth regime under private education, exogenous shocks that lower child mortality are detrimental for growth: fertility increases and education declines. In contrast, under a public education system, the stagnation steady state does not exist, and health improvement shocks are no longer detrimental for growth. We therefore offer a new rationale for the introduction of public education.     

Age at Arrival and Life Chances Among Childhood Immigrants

This study examines the causal relationship between childhood immigrants’ age at arrival and their life chances as adults. I analyze panel data on siblings from Norwegian administrative registries, which enables me to disentangle the effect of age at arrival on adult socioeconomic outcomes from all fixed family-level conditions and endowments shared by siblings. Results from sibling fixed-effects models reveal a progressively stronger adverse influence of immigration at later stages of childhood on completed education, employment, adult earnings, occupational attainment, and social welfare assistance. The persistence of these relationships within families indicates that experiences related to the timing of childhood immigration have causal effects on later-life outcomes. These age-at-arrival effects are considerably stronger among children who arrive from geographically distant and economically less-developed origin regions than among children originating from developed countries. The age-at-arrival effects vary less by parental education and child gender. On the whole, the findings indicate that childhood immigration after an early-life formative period tends to constrain later human capital formation and economic opportunities over the life course.     

中国人力资本空间分布差异的实证分析

教育是人力资本形成的重要途径,在研究人力资本空间分布差异时分别用中国东、中、西部地区人口的平均受教育年限、人力资本基尼系数、不同学历层次的人口比例和教育投资反映人力资本状况。文中采用1994-2009年的时序数据,分别从人力资本存量、人力资本结构和人力资本投资三个角度,对中国东、中、西部地区人力资本差异进行系统的分析和比较;并就如何缩小区域间人力资本差距协调区域经济发展,促进人力资源丰富的西部地区经济发展给出政策建议。     

陕西省不同人力资本投资方式与经济增长的实证分析

利用陕西省1995～2008年的相关数据,论证出陕西省物质资本存量和人力资本存量对经济增长的产出弹性分别为0.638和0.367,陕西省的经济增长主要是由物质资本的投入而拉动的。进一步研究人力资本不同投资方式与经济增长的实证关系。其中在职培训投资对经济增长的影响显著为正,卫生保健投资对经济增长的影响显著为负;而教育投资和劳动力迁移投资对经济增长的影响作用并不显著。提出合理的人力资本投资政策建议,提高人力资本的利用效率。     

From Child to Parent? The Significance of Children’s Education for Their Parents’ Longevity

In addition to own education and other socioeconomic resources, the education of one’s children may be important for individual health and longevity. Mothers and fathers born between 1932 and 1941 were analyzed by linking them to their children in the Swedish Multi-generation Register, which covers the total population. Controlling for parents’ education, social class, and income attenuates but does not remove the association between children’s education and parents’ mortality risk. Shared but unmeasured familial background characteristics were addressed by comparing siblings in the parental generation. In these fixed-effects analyses, comparing parents whose children had tertiary education with parents whose children completed only compulsory schooling (the reference group) yields a hazard ratio of 0.79 (95 % CI: 0.70–0.89) when the socioeconomic position of both parents is controlled for. The relationship is certainly not purely causal, but part of it could be if, for example, well-educated adult children use their resources to find the best available health care for their aging parents. I therefore introduce the concept of “social foreground” and suggest that children’s socioeconomic resources may be an important factor in trying to further understand social inequalities in health.     

The Influence of Education and Training on Work Attitudes and the Moderating Effect of Supervisor Attitudes: Examining Chinese Employees

Human capital is a source of competitive advantage for organizations, in which education and training play important roles in the process of increasing the quality and quantity of human capital. Specifically, large-scale multinationals use systemized, structured methods to establish education and training systems. By studying the employees in a major food company in China, this paper is to investigate the influence of education and training on employees’ work attitudes and the moderating effect of supervisors’ attitudes. It is found that education and training have a positive influence on employees’ work attitudes. Among the training courses, the training of managerial ability has the most significant influence, followed by self-development courses. In addition, supervisors’ attitudes toward employees receiving managerial ability training, during and after the training, clearly have a positive moderating effect on employees’ overall work attitudes.     

人力资本与大学生的就业实现和就业质量——基于问卷数据的实证分析

在对人力资本衡量指标详细讨论的基础上,本文利用一手抽样调查数据,实证检验了人力资本投资与大学生就业的关系,发现那些能够积极影响求职结果的人力资本变量,并不一定能在决定就业质量方面起到积极作用。这一反差表明,在中国转轨的劳动力市场中,大学毕业生的就业实现机制和就业质量决定机制存在差异:要想提高顺利就业的概率,大学生必须扩展人力资本的宽度和广度,拥有一个合适的人力资本结构;要想获得更高的就业质量,大学生必须增强人力资本的深度,从而拥有一个更高的人力资本质量。     

交通基础设施对农户人力资本投资的影响——基于准自然实验的因果推断分析

使用CFPS 2010和CFPS 2014家庭面板数据,以开通公路和公交作为准自然实验,研究了交通基础设施对农户人力资本投资的影响。基于PSM-DID方法的结果表明:通过增收效应和文化冲击等途径,交通基础设施能够显著改善农户的教育观;进而促进农户提高物质和非物质人力资本投资;这有利于端正农村青少年的学习态度,并最终有利于提高农村青少年学业成绩。所以应继续加强城乡间交通基础设施建设,以激发农户和农村青少年对教育的内生追求动力,促进农村人力资本积累。这不仅有利于推动教育公平,也有利于为“三农”注入内生发展动力,具有一定的社会和经济意义。